In case of manufacturing items or assembling them with other items, it is essential to perform an inspection of the manufacturing or assembly condition of items in order to increase the reliability of products. An inspection method is known in which an item is visually inspected to determine whether the item is defective. As a method of inspecting items, a method of transferring items using a conveyor transfer belt to automatically transfer an object to be inspected, or a method of inspecting transferred items using an inspection apparatus may be adopted.
If the automatically transferred item is inspected using the inspection apparatus, only an upper surface of the item or upper and side surfaces of the item can be inspected, and there is the problem that it is impossible to inspect all surfaces of the item at one go. In this case, an operation to transition the top and bottom surfaces of the item is necessary, and this operation may transition manually or require an additional apparatus.
Conventionally, Korean Patent Registration No. 10-1111272 discloses an apparatus that inspects an upper surface and a side surface of an object to be inspected while transferring the object to be inspected by a transfer rail. This document relates to an apparatus for inspecting an exterior of a case of an electronic device, wherein upper and side surfaces are inspected using a plurality of cameras.
Since the inspection apparatus according to the related art inspects only the upper surface and the side surface of the object to be inspected (the case of the electronic device), it is necessary to transition the top and bottom surfaces of the object to be inspected when the bottom surface of the object to be inspected also needs to be inspected. The transitioning of item surfaces to be inspected needs to be performed manually or using an additional transitioning device. In such a case, since a corresponding operation needs to be performed at a front end or a rear end of the transfer rail, there is the problem that the length of the entire line becomes longer, the space efficiency is decreased, and a tact time becomes longer. In addition, since a measurement is performed using a plurality of cameras, the entire inspection apparatus becomes large and costs increase.
The present disclosure provides an item transfer apparatus that transfers items so that items can be inspected at a single line and an item inspection apparatus that can inspect items at a single line, and a compact item transfer apparatus and item inspection apparatus that have a high spacial efficiency and that can reduce the tact time.